I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SOUNDTRACK: STELLA DONNELLY-“Talking” NPR’S SOUTH X LULLABY (March 19, 2018).

The South X Lullaby is a really fun way to get to know a new (or familiar, but mostly new) artist in an intimate live setting.  I had heard one of Stella Donnelly’s songs before, but this Lullaby presented her by herself (with a very cool backdrop) with an amazingly clear recording of her voice and guitar.

Stella Donnelly has only one EP to her name, but that’s been enough to make her sharp wit come through in sweet, quiet songs that rage loudly. The Australian singer-songwriter’s Thrush Metal EP was recently reissued in the U.S. with a bonus track, “Talking,” which she performs here surrounded by video of wires, a weaving machine and woolen yarns.

Her voice is clear with big open vowels (you can kind of hear the Australian accent, but it’s somewhat indeterminate).  Despite it being just her electric guitar, she plays a in a couple of slightly different styles throughout the song which adds a lot of texture to the piece.

For the end of the song she really unleashes her voice even as the guitar doesn’t alter all that much.  It’s pretty intense.

I wish you could see the art installation a bit more (I realize this is a video for her, but the installation is pretty neat).  At least they hold the pull-back screen at the end a little long so you can see what’s going on.

Donnelly played “Talking” in Conductors and Resistance, an art installation by the Israeli artist Ronen Sharabani that’s on display as part of the SXSW Art Program. Like Donnelly’s direct and feminist folk songs, Sharabani confronts the viewer to increase action in areas of high resistance, the only way to ensure a strong reaction.

[READ: April 13, 2016] “A Soldier Home”

Back in June of 2009, The New Yorker had their annual summer fiction issue.  Included in that issue were three short essays under the heading of “Summer Reading.”  I knew all three authors, so I decided to include them here.

This essay was about Yiyun Li’s growing up in China.

And I was astonished by the first line: “The summer after my year of involuntary service in the Chinese army….”  I didn’t know that women were made to be in it.  She says that after that summer, she read Hemingway compulsively.

She was always shy and private but the novels helped her through a lot of that.  She would sneak out of camp most nights and struggle through the books (her knowledge of English was rudimentary).  She could escape the misery of her army life and enter the lives of drama, love, death and madness.

When she returned home, her mother was beginning to descend into madness.  It was so unlike the novels where madness could be chilling yet strangely alluring.

Her father told her one day that her mother now pretty much only liked her: “she loves you more than your sister or me.”

The next morning, her father returned home from shopping for eggs with no eggs to be found.  Rationing was in effect and he was too late. Her mother freaked out and so Yiyun herself decided to wait in line to get some eggs for her family.  But she wasn’t Yiyun waiting on line, she was a fictional character, retreating, swimming, reuniting.

The last few paragraphs are really quite touching.

I’ve enjoyed Yiyun Li’s stories a lot over the last few months and this was a fascinating insight into her life.